Nudes collection represents, except one work, oil paintings created by Michael in between 1993 and 2012. Those sensual works are addressing patterns of human thoughts, dreams, memories, and the artist’s own quest for harmony and beauty. One can also notice while observing the collection the references to the world’s civilisation and the way of development of its culture and the way of artistic thought in visual art. For Michael’s world of his nudes, another dimension is important in many , if not all, his works – this dimension is Time which is known as the Fourth Dimension. There is no coincidence with this regard in the title of his principal work on the subject, Woman in the Fourth Dimension. What this dimension-quest means for the artist, and how it is connected in his perception namely with created by him nudes? Michael himself thinks that his nudes represent not only a female beauty and sensuality, but also our challenges – in our life-time, in our generation, in the drama specific for our current time. This approach similar with the one that Amedeo Modigliani, the one of the most beloved by Michael artists, have had in his epoch while he was creating a forum of his nudes who did speak about their turbulent time in early XX century with a rare expressiveness.
Thus, in Michael Rogatchi’s art created a century after Modigliani, unexpectedly, supposedly ‘decorative’ art works in fact bears witness of serious challenges, dilemmas, and uniqueness of life-span of every generation, in this case, ours. This is not necessarily what one might expect from a nude works, but this is why Michael has created these works in the first place. He believes in contrasting thinking, especially in art. He thinks that ‘beauty always provides the best, most challenging background to dramatic circumstances or difficult questions’. That is why so many of his nudes are dramatic figures prompting a viewer to a deeper contemplation. Many of them are longing, some of them are suffering personages. And as if keeping that ever-important in art balance, the other of Michael’s nudes are beautiful and gentle personages who are linking us with a beauty and mediation in the world.
Some of the works from this series belong to notable art collections in Scotland, Italy, Russia and other countries.
